Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA) Review
Introduction
Well its been one of the most long awaited games on the GBA and now its arrived. But before we go onto the next sections I just like to say that this game will probably ahhh screw that will waste your life away unless your battery’s run out failing that… well you’re pretty much screwed.
Getting on to the actual game now, Well where can I start, Ok Basic Game Details you say? Well Final Fantasy Tactics is like the Game says a Tactics Game, No Flashy FMV’s and Moving around towns and locations like many other Games and RPGs but like more in the same vein of Advance Wars and more like Tactics Ogre. Once you get into the very slow start you start to get the hang on rest of the game will be. You are in a Clan and must Engage (i.e. Battle) other clans and monsters within missions which are issued to in a pub no less.
Story
Your a small boy who has just moved house from the Warn smack bang into the middle of Winter. The game starts with you at school with some new friend and then proceed to get into a snowball fight which is you first introduction to battles. After the fight you and your friend come back to you house and upstairs with your Brother and Ritz and Newt your friend start to read a new book that Newt bought. The Book is a magical book with spells, and like any other kids they decide to read it out loud, Nothing Happens. However when night falls they get transported into this new world, which for Final Fantasy fans will be strangely familiar.
Graphics
If you’ve played Tactics Ogre (which most of you won’t have) then you’ll find the graphics strangely familiar, but that’s not to say that the bad infact they are quite the opposite with well animated characters and fighting it looks rather well on the small screen. And as you would expect for a Square game the graphics Interface and Menu is very polished and the world is detailed. The colors for this game at most point are very bright and pleasing to the eye. The only way it slows down (!?) Is when there is a lot of people all grouped up together.
Sound
As you would expect from Square there is very fine music sample through the game but nothing on par with Golden Sun 2 but still good none the least. There is also Digitalized Voices through out the game which give that little bit of oomph over other games in the Genre.
Gameplay
The actual Gameplay of FFTA is more like other strategy RPG’s however it does have it own features which make it unique. Battle are taken in turns on an Isometrics plane, The Computer controlled players are on the map with you which makes it a simple 6×6 battle. The people with the fastest speed go first and then can choose to move or attack or visa versa. You would think with Computer Controlled played would take a while and slow the battle down but it doesn’t as much as Advance Wars 2 or other Strategy Games. But after about 30 hours of the game you wish you could as even though the enemy has good AI, it still is a bit stupid and Annoying.
However the game is not all battle you can “move” around from city to city but as you would in a normal RPG such as Pokemon Ruby. This does feel a bit weird but it doesn’t really matter and its good to see a game doing things different.
Difficulty
There is more Missions then you cann beleive in this game there is also tons of items and thing to do and there is also multi-player. All of which have a good learning curve, Dont Expect to finish the game for a while.
